When the Aintree classic was first televised in 1960 it was a jaw-dropping 10 minutes of hectic exhilaration, sheer wonder and palpitating alarms
Around five o'clock on Saturday afternoon it will be very much thank you, goodbye, and back to the studio. Forever. It is era's end as BBC television brings down its curtain on live Grand National coverage after 52 consecutive years. The appealing Channel 4 racing team has won exclusive rights to all terrestrial coverage for four years from 2013 in a deal that includes the Derby and Ascot meetings, although it is the ancient and unfailingly vivid and theatrical Aintree steeplechase that was the jewel in the BBC's crown with a UK audience of more than 10 million and an estimated worldwide viewing figure of 500 million.
The first live transmission, on 26 March 1960, stopped the nation in its tracks as it refashioned sport into a mix of high drama, light entertainment and compelling heroism – and crammed the lot on to a 12-inch screen showing fuzzy little faraway figures in flickering grey monochrome.
More than half a century ago it was a jaw-dropping 10 minutes of hectic exhilaration, sheer wonder, and palpitating alarms. Or so I was told: at the time I was engaged in a breathlessly hectic weekly task myself – as a downtable cub sub-editor on the Saturday football Pink'un of the Bristol Evening World, and only the senior backbench staff had been allowed a fleeting break to watch the race in the editor's office. I remember they returned to the desk enraptured by the miracle of it all.
The winner was Merryman II, the 13-2 favourite ridden by Gerry Scott. The trailblazing endeavour was an epic logistical feat for the comparatively fledging broadcaster. All those cables, all those cameras. Founding fathers were the BBC's head of outside broadcasts (who doubled as smoothie presenter), the urbane Peter Dimmock, the honey-voiced commentator Peter O'Sullevan, and the senior directors Ray Lakeland and Dennis Monger.
Their primary job had been the most difficult – to clinch a deal with Aintree's owner, the capricious and fickle matron Mrs Mirabel Topham. The (literal) class acts of Dimmock, who was married to gossip-column upper-cruster Polly Elwes, and the patrician O'Sullevan helped, for sure, but it was probably the sage and genial Lancastrian Lakeland who settled it with his mollifying of the difficult Mrs T. "Now then, m'dear, what's all this fuss about you wantin' more money?"
Happily, true-great Dimmock, 92 in December, is still with us, as is "Sir Pedro" of the Savile Row dulcets, who was 94 last month. The latter's memory is as sharp as it ever was and he recalls Merryman II's win as if it were just a couple of Saturdays ago. "In the middle of that winter I'd sat up half a night drinking brandy with a bookmaker chum in Nottingham and I asked him for 40-1 on Merryman, but he would only settle for a £1,000 to £28 [about 36-1].
"Come race day, and they hired me a monitor from a local electrical store down the road and they'd provided with it a boy assistant to twiddle the knobs for us. But there was scarcely any identifiable image on the screen, so when the race began it was all very scary, even more than usual a seat-of-my-pants occasion. As well, the communications from the control scanner were almost inaudible, and nor could I hear much from any fellow commentator out in the country. I just picked up the running when I thought it seemed right – and mercifully at the end everyone said it had all gone pretty well in spite of our pre-transmission nightmares and panic stations."
O'Sullevan, of course, continued to describe 37 more Nationals till 1997 and Lord Gyllene's emotional Monday victory two days after the IRA bomb hoax. O'Sullevan remains full of the joys as he raises money for equestrian charities.
There is, however, an even more notable BBC television jubilee to celebrate this spring. Seventy-five Aprils ago, the illustrious pioneer head of BBC TV Gerald Cock wrote to the secretary of the All England club at Wimbledon, the grandee Major Larcombe, to ask: "Could television carry out an experimental transmission this summer. We would be tackling unknown quantities and the apparatus has not yet been used over such a distance, so we do not know whether we can achieve yet a satisfactory link between Wimbledon and Alexandra Palace."
But they did – even though two days before the 1937 championships began, a BBC engineer's memo reported: "Cause of interference for our mobile transmitter at Wimbledon has been traced to Hornsey Central hospital, who have agreed as far as possible to suspend diathermy activities during times we are transmitting."
The hospital kept its word and on the afternoon of 21 June an unbroken passage of 25 minutes was relayed from a match between the British champion Bunny Austin and a Mr GL Rogers. Fewer than 2,000 Londoners had TV sets at that time, even though sales had been boosted by the coronation of George VI the month before.
Next morning came the first ever television crit of a sporting event, when the Daily Telegraph exulted: "Tele-viewers could observe every movement of the players. Even the passage of the marks of the lawn mower over the grass were distinctly visible. There were also scenes provided of spectators in the stands and their faces could be seen clearly."
Eat your heart out, young Martin Kelner.